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patrons

I'm Kim Werker, and I'm like a camp counselor for grownups. Along with a diverse group of people, I am building a community of creative adventurers.

This community is for anyone and everyone who is on a creative journey – whether you're trying to simply be more creative, to develop a creative habit or regular practice, or you're a working crafter or artist.Through a private, inclusive, supportive group and through live video chats, we share our highs and lows, celebrate our finished projects (the successes and the failures), and just simply get to know each other.

All people are welcome, regardless of ability or experience, and intolerance of any kind is not tolerated.

Who Am I?

I have a long and varied career in the craft and DIY world, and if there's one thread that connects all the work I do it's that creative exploration can and should be a part of our daily lives – everyone's daily lives, even people who insist they aren't creative or have no talent or couldn't paint their way out of a paper bag. It's not about how good we are at creating things – it's about how much fun we can have even if the end result is a total mess, and it's about understanding what creativity means to us.

Since the mid-2000s I've worked as a crochet editor (at CrochetMe.com, the website I founded in 2004; and at Interweave Crochet magazine), written six books about crochet, taught four online crochet classes with Craftsy/Bluprint, burnt out on crochet and worked at a tech startup, challenged myself to make something – anything – every day for a year (still going since 2014), and realized that writing is my favourite creative outlet and that teaching online is my favourite part of my career.

Mighty Ugly is perhaps the most well-known project I do – it involves making something truly hideous on purpose in an effort to make ourselves feel more comfortable about the inevitability of making ugly things by accident as we learn how to make beautiful things. I wrote a book inspired by this project, called Make It Mighty Ugly.

Within our community, I nudge us along, provide prompts and tips and advice when asked, and share exclusive work and adventures with members.

Ok, so how does this work? Let's do it Q & A style.

WHAT IS PATREON?Patreon is a platform that's kind of like Kickstarter or Indiegogo, but instead of enabling a discrete project to be funded one time, it enables people to support ongoing projects like this community we're building.

This particular Patreon is a membership-based group. Rather than supporting a particular project of mine, you are joining a diverse, supportive and inclusive group of people from around the world who value exploring their creative experience along with others.

There are two major hubs of this community: The online group/forum (currently hosted on Facebook and soon to move to a non-Facebook platform that's going to be superduper), and live video gatherings.

Though joining the group is open to the public without cost, Patrons' support covers the costs of the group platforms and related software, and for my time. This enables me not only to do the behind-the-scenes tech work, it also enables me to continue my work leading creative adventures for all members.

Features only available to Patrons: Live video chats once or twice a month, a private group only for supporters, and exclusive work from me.

The private group is private for a reason – it allows us to build trust and get to know each other outside the mayhem of social media. The group chats enable us to see each other in real time, even from far away (though participating with video is not at all required – participation only by voice or even just by text chat is most welcome). The live chats are recorded, so if you miss one you can watch along another time.

HOW DOES PATREON WORK?You join our community at the Tier of your choosing. Every month, Patreon will charge you in the amount of your pledge. If you support more than one creator on Patreon (I support several, myself!), you can set a limit to the amount of money you spend each month so you can be sure to stay within your budget.On my end, each month Patreon makes the total amount of funds collected available to me (less their fees), providing me with a stable, predictable income to support the time and expense of keeping this community going.

HOW, EXACTLY, DO I PARTICIPATE ONCE I JOIN?When you join at any Tier, you will be invited to join the private group, and you will gain access to all of the Patreon posts I've ever made available to the Tier you've joined. In some of those recent posts will be information about the upcoming live video chats, including the link to click to participate when the scheduled chat time arrives.

(Once our new platform is up and running [hopefully by <g>March,</g> 2019], you'll be able to connect your Patreon account to it, giving you automatic access to the features only Patrons get.)

What you get out of this community is up to you. Please dive in and introduce yourself when you first join. We are a very friendly and welcoming bunch, and there are no wrong reasons to be here, no stupid questions to ask, and no right way to participate (so long as that participation is respectful and kind).

WHAT ARE GOALS?Goals are things we can undertake once our community grows to a certain size. For example, our first goal was to get our private group off Facebook so we can have a stable, consistent platform to use that's not controlled by a massive multinational corporation that's proven itself to have dubious morals, at best. The new platform costs money, and there will be ongoing fees to keep it going. It's a super platform, though, which will be easy to use and which integrates beautifully with Patreon to allow for all kinds of nifty features moving forward.

When we reach our next membership milestone, I'll start a podcast that's all about creative exploration and adventuring.

As our community grows and evolves, we'll identify more and different things we'd like to do. We can set more and different kinds of goals, accordingly.

Thank you for reading this far!I'm so excited to get to know you, and to see what we'll create together.

Goals

63 of 100 patrons

Bring Back the Podcast!Short-form, bi-monthly to start, on topics members can suggest. From tales and anecdotes to audio tutorials to concocted adventures, to exclusives just for members – all inside your ears.

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I'm Kim Werker, and I'm like a camp counselor for grownups. Along with a diverse group of people, I am building a community of creative adventurers.

This community is for anyone and everyone who is on a creative journey – whether you're trying to simply be more creative, to develop a creative habit or regular practice, or you're a working crafter or artist.Through a private, inclusive, supportive group and through live video chats, we share our highs and lows, celebrate our finished projects (the successes and the failures), and just simply get to know each other.

All people are welcome, regardless of ability or experience, and intolerance of any kind is not tolerated.

Who Am I?

I have a long and varied career in the craft and DIY world, and if there's one thread that connects all the work I do it's that creative exploration can and should be a part of our daily lives – everyone's daily lives, even people who insist they aren't creative or have no talent or couldn't paint their way out of a paper bag. It's not about how good we are at creating things – it's about how much fun we can have even if the end result is a total mess, and it's about understanding what creativity means to us.

Since the mid-2000s I've worked as a crochet editor (at CrochetMe.com, the website I founded in 2004; and at Interweave Crochet magazine), written six books about crochet, taught four online crochet classes with Craftsy/Bluprint, burnt out on crochet and worked at a tech startup, challenged myself to make something – anything – every day for a year (still going since 2014), and realized that writing is my favourite creative outlet and that teaching online is my favourite part of my career.

Mighty Ugly is perhaps the most well-known project I do – it involves making something truly hideous on purpose in an effort to make ourselves feel more comfortable about the inevitability of making ugly things by accident as we learn how to make beautiful things. I wrote a book inspired by this project, called Make It Mighty Ugly.

Within our community, I nudge us along, provide prompts and tips and advice when asked, and share exclusive work and adventures with members.

Ok, so how does this work? Let's do it Q & A style.

WHAT IS PATREON?Patreon is a platform that's kind of like Kickstarter or Indiegogo, but instead of enabling a discrete project to be funded one time, it enables people to support ongoing projects like this community we're building.

This particular Patreon is a membership-based group. Rather than supporting a particular project of mine, you are joining a diverse, supportive and inclusive group of people from around the world who value exploring their creative experience along with others.

There are two major hubs of this community: The online group/forum (currently hosted on Facebook and soon to move to a non-Facebook platform that's going to be superduper), and live video gatherings.

Though joining the group is open to the public without cost, Patrons' support covers the costs of the group platforms and related software, and for my time. This enables me not only to do the behind-the-scenes tech work, it also enables me to continue my work leading creative adventures for all members.

Features only available to Patrons: Live video chats once or twice a month, a private group only for supporters, and exclusive work from me.

The private group is private for a reason – it allows us to build trust and get to know each other outside the mayhem of social media. The group chats enable us to see each other in real time, even from far away (though participating with video is not at all required – participation only by voice or even just by text chat is most welcome). The live chats are recorded, so if you miss one you can watch along another time.

HOW DOES PATREON WORK?You join our community at the Tier of your choosing. Every month, Patreon will charge you in the amount of your pledge. If you support more than one creator on Patreon (I support several, myself!), you can set a limit to the amount of money you spend each month so you can be sure to stay within your budget.On my end, each month Patreon makes the total amount of funds collected available to me (less their fees), providing me with a stable, predictable income to support the time and expense of keeping this community going.

HOW, EXACTLY, DO I PARTICIPATE ONCE I JOIN?When you join at any Tier, you will be invited to join the private group, and you will gain access to all of the Patreon posts I've ever made available to the Tier you've joined. In some of those recent posts will be information about the upcoming live video chats, including the link to click to participate when the scheduled chat time arrives.

(Once our new platform is up and running [hopefully by <g>March,</g> 2019], you'll be able to connect your Patreon account to it, giving you automatic access to the features only Patrons get.)

What you get out of this community is up to you. Please dive in and introduce yourself when you first join. We are a very friendly and welcoming bunch, and there are no wrong reasons to be here, no stupid questions to ask, and no right way to participate (so long as that participation is respectful and kind).

WHAT ARE GOALS?Goals are things we can undertake once our community grows to a certain size. For example, our first goal was to get our private group off Facebook so we can have a stable, consistent platform to use that's not controlled by a massive multinational corporation that's proven itself to have dubious morals, at best. The new platform costs money, and there will be ongoing fees to keep it going. It's a super platform, though, which will be easy to use and which integrates beautifully with Patreon to allow for all kinds of nifty features moving forward.

When we reach our next membership milestone, I'll start a podcast that's all about creative exploration and adventuring.

As our community grows and evolves, we'll identify more and different things we'd like to do. We can set more and different kinds of goals, accordingly.

Thank you for reading this far!I'm so excited to get to know you, and to see what we'll create together.